David Birmingham

David B. Birmingham (born 1938 ) is an English historian and academic, specialising in modern Central African and Angolan history. He is emeritus Professor of History at the University of Kent.

Biography Birmingham was born in England and grew up in Switzerland from 1947 to 1954, attending a French school. After doing social work in Germany as a conscientious objector for his National Service, he moved to Accra in 1955 and enrolled at the University College of the Gold Coast (renamed University College of Ghana in 1957), where his father was a professor of political economy, and graduated with a BA in African history during the 1950s.

In 1960, Birmingham took a six-week course in Portuguese in Coimbra before beginning his research at the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino.

Birmingham lectured in West Africa from 1963 to 1965, at SOAS from 1965 to 1966, and in Latin American history at the University of Ghana from 1966 to 1979. In 1980, he was appointed to the chair of modern history at the University of Kent in Canterbury, from which he retired in 2002.

He first travelled to Angola in 1963, on a scholarship from the Institute of Race Relations, Between 1971 and 1974, he corresponded with the South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist Colin Legum.

He joined the Reform Club in London before 1974. He is a member of the advisory board of the BP-sponsored British-Angola Forum at Chatham House, established in 1998.

Work Birmingham specialises in Angolan and Central African history from 1400 to 1990.

Birmingham's 1987 report on the informal economy in Angola served as a planning paper to members of the Angolan cabinet led at the time by José Eduardo dos Santos.

He is a contributor to the Accord series published by the Conciliation Resources.

Publications Authored The Portuguese Conquest of Angola, London: Oxford University Press, 1965 (an Institute of Race Relations publication) Trade and Conflict in Angola: The Mbundu and Their Neighbours Under the Influence of the Portuguese, 1483–1790, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966 Central Africa to 1870: Zambezia, Zaïre, and the South Atlantic: Chapters from The Cambridge History of Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, Kwame Nkrumah, London: Cardinal, 1990, (rev. edn. as Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1998, ) Frontline Nationalism in Angola & Mozambique, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1992, A Concise History of Portugal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, (2nd edn. 2003, 3rd edn. 2018) The Decolonization of Africa, London: UCL Press, 1995, Portugal and Africa, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999, Trade and Empire in the Atlantic, 1400–1600, London: Routledge, 2000, Switzerland: A Village History, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, "Angola", in Patrick Chabal et al., A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa, London: Hurst & Co., 2002, pp. 137–84, Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006, A Short History of Modern Angola, London: Hurst & Co., 2015, Canterbury Before the Normans, Lancaster: Palatine Books, 2015,

Edited or translated (ed., with Richard Gray) Pre-colonial African Trade: Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Africa Before 1900, London: Oxford University Press, 1970, (ed., with Phyllis M. Martin) History of Central Africa, 3 vols., London: Longman, 1983–1998

Honours and awards John and Peggy Hayes Canterbury Award (2017, for Canterbury before the Normans) Bourdarie Prize from the French Academy of Overseas Studies (2020, for the French translation of A Short History of Modern Angola)

Personal life Birmingham is married to Elizabeth, with whom he has children.